


It's Not Paradise (Without You)

by ShoutIntoTheVoid



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode Fix-It: s15e20 Carry On, Episode: s15e20 Carry On, First Kiss, Getting Together, Love Confessions, M/M, the Whole Nine Yards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:13:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27765778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShoutIntoTheVoid/pseuds/ShoutIntoTheVoid
Summary: Cas doesn't know how to deal with the fallout of a deathbed love confession. So he chooses not to.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 173





	It's Not Paradise (Without You)

**Author's Note:**

> My 2020 bingo certainly did not have writing destiel fic on it... but here we are.

Castiel experienced many emotions when Jack first informed him that Dean Winchester was in heaven. At first there was a great cloud of sadness. Hs grief was so strong it made the seraph woozy. Dean had died too young. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. He’d seen Dean’s soul and he knew that this was how the hunter always expected it would happen, but that didn’t stop Castiel from wanting more for him. Knowing that Chuck was defeated gave him hope, but some things are inevitable. Dean was always going to die.

The next emotion tumbled after the first as smooth as an ocean’s wave: anger. Vaguely the angel remembered a moment on earth, pinning Dean to a wall with fury and power in his voice. _I gave up everything for you_. Did his sacrifice to the Empty mean nothing? Dean had barely even tasted free will before he, what? Died on a stupid hunt? Castiel seethed at the thought.

The only emotion stronger than his grief, so much more powerful than his anger that it shook Castiel out of his spiraling thoughts like a slap to the face, was embarrassment. Castiel’s face was so hot with mortification, if he could, he’d be sweating. Something in his chest seized at the realization that if Dean was in heaven, he would have to literally face the consequences of his confession. There was a reason he’d sat on the nuke of his feelings until he was certain that he’d immediately perish after expressing them. He never intended to stick around for the fallout. But that too now seemed inevitable.

When Jack first brought him back from the Empty, he gave Castiel the choice of returning to Earth. Cas had chosen heaven. He knew that it needed a remodel and that Jack would need help, and so he called it a father-son bonding activity. All the parenting books he read years ago discussed how to strengthen paternal relationships through actions, and he reasoned that it would be a good change of pace for those actions to _not_ revolve around trying to stay alive for once. It wasn’t a lie, he loved spending time with his son, but it also wasn’t the full truth. Being with Jack, working on heaven like it was an old car in need of a tune up, it was a good opportunity to bide his time. He knew he’d have to face Dean one way or another, but he didn’t expect it to be so soon.

Jack looked at him with an amused understanding but said nothing. Castiel was proud of him for defeating Chuck and all, but having an omniscient God for a son could be frustrating in moment’s like these, moment’s where he’d like to hide from the world. He couldn’t hide from Jack because he _was_ the world, but he could hide from someone else.

*****

Dean had been in heaven for a few weeks when he decided that paradise actually blows. Maybe he was just one of those guys that couldn’t ever relax. Maybe the problem wasn’t him but an absence of someone else.

He was driving Baby, or heaven’s approximation of Baby, cruising down an open road like he had every day since he got there. Bobby teased him about it, something about old habits dying hard, which Dean thinks was supposed to be a pun. What Bobby doesn’t know is that he isn’t just cruising for the sake of burning rubber. Dean’s been looking for a certain angel.

Hell, maybe Bobby does know that, if the pointed way he talked about Cas upon his arrival was anything to go by. Ever since he’d said the words _Cas helped_ , Dean has spent every day scouring the place for where the bastard has been hiding. Part of him is starting to expect that Cas isn’t even in his neck of the woods, so to speak, that maybe the angel is off in some other part of heaven completely out of reach. But there’s something that tugs at Dean’s chest that tells him he’s wrong, that urges him forward, out onto the road every day.

Dean almost calls on Jack once, but then decides better of it. He doesn’t want to get the kid involved in their little domestic. He doesn’t need to know why mommy and daddy are fighting, although if Dean thinks too hard he guesses Jack probably already knows, the kid being God and all that.

And the frustrating thing is mommy and daddy aren’t even fighting yet, because Dean can’t get his hands on Cas. He’s angry, he realizes, that Cas is so clearly avoiding him, but more than that he’s scared.

Dean tries to ignore his feelings as he continues his search down the open road. He’s farther today than he’s ever been, and he feels a little uneasy about it, like he’s about to get to the edge of the horizon like in _The Truman Show_ and this whole thing is about to be revealed to be a dream or some weird trick. He’s driving through what looks like an onion field when the sun starts to dip, and he thinks that means it’s about to be time to turn back, but then he notices something.

In the distance, Dean can see a person in the field, standing stalk still like an extra in _Juraissic Park_. Dean inches Baby closer, and the wind knocks out of him as he registers the figure is wearing a camel trench coat.

_Cas_ , Dean breathes, or doesn’t. 

When he pulls Baby to a stop and gets out of the car, he and the angel are standing opposite one another on either side of the road. For a moment, they just look at each other. Cas’s face is just as pinched and unreadable as Dean feels. There’re several feelings that pass through the hunter. The first is anger. That was always the one closest to the surface, and it’s easy to feel now. It’s easy to question where the hell Cas has been hiding, and why. To be angry that Cas _left_ him in the first place, left him so that Dean had to die in order to see him again, and then didn’t even come to the welcome party.

Like it always does, the anger ebbs almost as quickly as it comes, and Dean is left feeling despair, like someone shook a soda can up and let the pressure build only for it to be empty when it finally pops. Flashbacks of the last time Dean saw Cas roll through his mind and all he can think is _loss_. One moment Cas there, the next gone.

The third emotion, and the one he decides to stick with, is relief. Cas is here. He found him. Cas is _here_. Dean lets that feeling propel him forward. For a moment, Cas looks scared, like Dean is winding up for a punch, but the minute the hunter has him in his arms, the angel melts.

“Cas.” Dean breathes. It feels like praying used to, like he tapped into a secret line. He missed the feeling of being heard.

“Hello, Dean.” Cas croaked.

They pull away and Dean has tears in his eyes.

“Where have you been man? I’ve been driving all over, looking for you. You weren’t at the family reunion.” He tries to joke, but it falls flat. 

Somehow that was the wrong thing to say, because Cas’ face droops.

“I didn’t- I wasn’t sure-“ Cas looks at his feet, “I didn’t know if you’d want to see me.”

Dean’s eyes crinkle, “What?”

“Well, the way I’d left things—”

“You mean when you sacrificed yourself for me? That time?” and now Dean was angry again, “You do all that and you don’t think I want to see you?”

Cas flinched, “It’s not that I—”

“You tell me how much I’ve changed you and then what?” Dean steamrolls on, “You think I’m just gonna drop you like a hot potato?”

“I don’t understand what potatoes have to—”

“Dammit Cas,” Dean takes a deep breath and sighs, “just- just tell me what’s going on.”

“I didn’t _want_ to face you.” Cas replies, so plainly Dean almost chokes on it.

“Face me?”

“After what I—” Cas sighs, “ _revealed_ the last time we saw one another. That I—” he stops himself, “I thought I was going to be gone forever and I didn’t know how to face you with it now that that’s not the case.”

Dean sits with this, worries it like his lip between his teeth.

“What you said.” Dean begins.

“Dean—” Cas tries to interrupt.

“No Cas, just- just _listen_ to me alright?”

Cas goes quiet.

“What you said,” Dean begins again, “it opened up pandora’s box, man. I’d been operating under some wrong assumptions for so long that having them contradicted, and then not being able to get any clarity after… I thought I knew how painful losing you could be, I thought I’d been down that road before, but this time was different.

“Every time you died before, it hurt like hell. I mean I‘d spend weeks doing stupid crap like drinking my liver sore and getting reckless on hunts. But, then you’d be back before I could do anything too stupid and before I could even think about _why_ I felt the way I did. That last time though, it was different because of what you said. I knew you wouldn’t—” Dean cleared his throat, “You wouldn’t say all that if you thought you were coming back. And then on top of the knowledge that this was really, _truly_ it for you, I couldn’t hide from my own feelings because I knew why I felt the way that I did. Because you said exactly how I felt.

“ _You_ changed _me_.” Dean says it like nothing has ever been so true. Cas’s face crumbles for a different reason. “You said I taught you how to love, but you taught me how to have faith, Cas. When I lost you I lost that.”

“Dean.” Cas says, and it comes out like a whimper.

“Sam kept saying that we’d won, but it never felt like it because you were gone.” Dean shrugs his shoulders, kicks the dirt under his boot, “I fell into old habits, got sloppy on hunts and hey, now I’m here.” he has the good sense to wince at that.

“Dean I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.” Cas says, desperation creeping on the edges of his voice.

Dean tries to find more words, but the well comes up empty. Instead of saying anything, he takes a hand and cups Cas’s face. For a moment he just looks. He sees the tears building in the angel’s eyes, and he thinks back to that day. Cas crying out his confession one moment and then being gone the next. He thinks about what he wished he could do then, when it was too late. But, this is heaven, and it’s never too late.

Dean leans forward and kisses Cas. It’s chaste and quick but when he pulls away Cas’s lips follow his and then they’re kissing in earnest.

“I love you.” Dean whispers, a smile twisting on his lips.

Cas just laughs to himself at the absurdity of it all.

“I know.” He huffs and then leans in to kiss Dean again, just because he can.

When Dean pulls back he looks bewildered, “Did you just Han Solo me?”

Cas grins, a cocksure look he picked up over the years, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Dean laughs with his belly, and Cas laughs too. They’re both laughing and kissing and suddenly, Dean thinks, it feels like paradise.

“Do you want to take a ride with me?” Dean asks after a while.

Cas smiles, “Yes, Dean.” and kisses the hunter again for good measure, “I’d like that very much.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I am obsessed with the idea that Cas treats his confession like a risky text and just... deletes his number so he doesn't have to face the consequences. I also love the idea that Dean hears Cas is in heaven and immediately goes to find him. Anyway... fuck the CW! All my homies HATE the CW!!!


End file.
